Read this feature on Mew over at Prefix.

“It was an intimate portrait of the band I was about to interview — a Mew without distortion, without Jørgensen’s resounding and powerful drums. It was a bare-bones arrangement of songs, simplified but not restricted or narrowed. The audience was dead silent, except for when the songs ended and praise easily slipping from the audience and filled the small room.”

Oh Lindsey, it’s the trouble makers that are always worth it. I won’t throw my walker at you. (YouTube)

19 year old Adam Baker’s North Carolina-based band, Annuals, is hot shit. If you like Guillemots, Animal Collective, Rogue Wave or CYHSY, you’ll love it. It’s vaguely lo-fi, but full of sound and energy, at times simple and delicately angelic, and at other times rowdy and theatrical and flat-out rocking. Violins, walls of drums, impressively non-19 year old sounding lyrics and moments of Arcade Fire-like spasms that sound not at all like a copy. Really good stuff, I highly recommend all the songs, but especially “Bleary Eyed”.

• Annuals: Bleary Eyed

• Annuals: Dry Clothes

• Annuals: Ida My